Tuesday, 29 October 2013

Weaning Wednesdays

If you follow me on Twitter (@tobecomemum), you'll know that I've been reading up on weaning as Ethan is definitely ready for more than milk at mealtimes.

He will be six months old next week - where has the time gone?! - and I wanted to stick to the NHS advice of waiting this long to try weaning. Ethan has always fed well, aside from the reflux, and it's only been the past couple of weeks where there have been clear signs that he's ready to get to the good stuff.

He's been watching us closely and whenever we eat or drink, he's fascinated and just sits there staring. He has been getting more fidgety and distracted during his feeds, playing with his hands, chewing the bottle or looking away so milk dribbles down his chin. Over the past week, he's also started smacking his lips together in a goldfish type motion which really gives us a giggle!

So, I've been reading up and trying to work out what weaning is all about. It really is a confusing business as magazines don't go into enough detail and there's so many conflicting ideas between the convenience and consistency of purées and the fun and straightforward baby led weaning method.

I've bought two Annabel Karmel books to help give me a good understanding of how much to feed him, when and how to build it up. The rather lovely team at @MamaBabyBliss kindly tweeted my weaning worries to their followers and I received lots of great advice from real mums via Twitter and their Facebook page. Trouble is, every mum and every baby are different so we will need to find our own way through the weaning maze, backed up by all the advice we've had.

I've also bought the Tommee Tippee Explora Weaning Starter Kit which looks great, has everything you need to get started and is less than £10 on Amazon. Along with cover-all bibs and a splash at for the floor and we're good to go!

Nothing beats advice from real mums so I'm going to share our weaning journey on this blog for a new feature called Weaning Wednesday in the hope that it may help others on the road to solids. Today is day one for Ethan so wish us luck!